News

May 19, 2016

7 Tips for an effective eMail Marketing Campaign

Emails. How much time do you spend each day sending, reading and deleting emails? For most of us they are a fundamental part of running a business. Your email marketing campaigns are meant to engage, motivate and encourage your existing and potential customers. Be careful though, if you don't follow some simple rules your customers might be unsubscribing.

When planning your email marketing campaigns keep the following points in mind and you can feel confident when you hit the send button.

1. Create a clear and concise email subject

Once an email lands in your customer in-box, the first thing they look at is the subject. A poor subject line could get your emails caught by spam filters, not opened, or get people to unsubscribe from your list. So make it memorable and something interesting that would inspire someone to open it. Describe what benefit you are providing and create an immediate emotion.

2. Don't spam

Spam is usually considered to be electronic junk mail. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited email. There are laws you need to be aware of for your direct marketing campaigns, make sure you know what the rules are. When you collect customer details, you must get their permission if you want to send them other offers or promotions. They must also be given an option to opt out of receiving future emails.

3. Use interesting and eye-catching graphics

Success! Your reader has opened your email, do not lose them with dull or uninteresting graphics and images. It's very important to get the balance right when it comes to text v's graphics. No-one wants to read a page of text. Provide snippets of information with interesting images to grab your readers attention. Use bullet points or numbers to highlight interesting offers.

4. Use a Call to Action

Calls to action stimulate interest in your product or service. They also provide a built-in purpose for sending the email. Write a concise email speaking directly to your target audience, and describe whatever the direct benefit of the click is. "Receive a 15% discount on your next purchase" is a clear benefit. "Receive 15% off all homewares – today only" is an even more time sensitive call to action. Your reader should really want to click because there is an immediate, emotional benefit and drives the customer to where you want them to go – your site.

5. Consider the best time to send the email

It's Monday morning and the average working person has just arrived at their job. They turn on their computer and there pops up 50 new messages. Chances are if you have sent an email campaign over the weekend it is getting deleted on Monday. The scenario is the same for Friday afternoon. The best times are Tuesday and Wednesday mid-morning or mid-afternoon.

6. A/B Test

If you have the chance, before you send out an email campaign to 1000s of subscribers, try it out first. Take two ideas you think will be successful and dry run it to groups of 50. Look at the metrics to see which one performs better, then you know which subject line and call to action are your clear, definitive winners.

7. Measure success

More often than not measuring success (or failure) of an email marketing campaign is overlooked. Measuring open rates and click through rates is a critical part of your campaign. What is the point of sending emails if you don't know how many people are opening them? What is considered successful is dependent on different industries and the campaign objective. One approach to measuring success could be to look at where you are now in terms of open rates and click throughs and increase your goal by 5% or 10%.

Hopefully you have found this useful and are now better prepared to embark upon your email marketing campaigns. If you need some help and support with your email marketing we can provide advice and guidance every step of the way.